New PTSD studies: TM as a "black box" - what's inside?

Recent studies claiming that Transcendental Meditation is effective in treating PTSD, and that it provides other benefits, treat TM as a “black box.” As with many similar past studies, researchers fail to consider that this method of meditation instruction contains several hours of other information, which creates a context of expectation of life improvement, a structure or habit which will improve life, and an authority who provides the assurance that TM will unfailingly produce those changes. These inadequacies in the design of these studies would be obvious, if all aspects of instruction in the TM program that have never been opened for examination by the TM teaching organization were properly studied and controlled for by independent researchers.

Another research study, this time on using TM as a method of treating PTSD, has just been published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress. The study, “A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of Transcendental Meditation as Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Veterans,” purports to show that “Veterans with PTSD who practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique showed significant reductions in PTSD symptom severity.” A widely circulated press release issued by Maharishi International University announced this study, headlined with the “Transcendental Meditation effective in reducing PTSD, sleep problems, depression symptoms” claim. It includes the same sort of ubiquitous bar chart that’s been seen in TM promotional efforts since at least the mid-1970’s.

It should be noted that while the data analysis performed in this study showed significant positive changes with respect to PTSD, insomnia, depression and anxiety, there were no significant changes on the measures of anger and quality of life, the last being one of TM’s traditional selling points. More notable is the way in which this study, as with many others performed with the participation of the Maharishi International University (MIU) research faculty, relies on a vague if not inappropriately inaccurate description of Transcendental Meditation, as if it were solely a method practiced inside the mind and contained no other significant aspects, doctrine or belief that might in some way affect behavior which would then produce these results, among some people, for some limited period of time. 

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 5: The bottom of the barrel of published TM research articles

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 4).

David W. Orme-Johnson. From "Inaugurating the
Dawn of the Age of Enlightenment," 1975

We here at the TM-Free Blog have received a comment from David W. Orme-Johnson. He’s a former Maharishi University of Management psychology department chairman and a frequent defender and promoter of TM research studies. I’ve mentioned him and his website a number of times in previous parts of this series, “The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation.” He submitted his comment in response to the second part posted here at the TM-Free Blog on September 22, 2019, subtitled ‘"Peer review" doesn't always mean "quality" or "accuracy.”’ In 2015, he claimed to have no formal affiliation with the TM movement on his website, but a published comment that same year indicated that he was then associated with the “Research Desk, Maharishi Foundation USA.”

As a matter of editorial policy, the contributors to the TM-Free Blog don’t particularly care to reprint the TM movement’s marketing materials. There are thousands of TM movement operated or affiliated websites worldwide that serve that purpose. There is also, of course,  Orme-Johnson’s own website, “Truth About TM,” that contains plenty of defenses of TM research and a few rebuttals of critics from his point of view, that’s evidently very similar to that of the TM organization. Parts of his submitted comment are of a promotional nature, therefore I won’t be running his comment in the comments, or as a post, verbatim.

The "evidence-based" claim, as it appears on the
tm.org website at the time of this writing.

I may write up a full response to Orme-Johnson’s comment at some later date. Since this is a series about the usual claims made by the TM movement, particularly with respect to research findings and how they are represented, particularly with respect to being published in “peer-reviewed” journals, I will respond here to two elements of his comment. The first part of his comment further illustrates the problems with TM research that contradict the TM movement’s claims that, among other things, Transcendental Meditation should be considered “evidence-based” because of this body of research studies. He wrote:

The second paper the blog uses to criticize TM research is a preliminary study by the late Sarina Grosswald and co-authors on ADHD. In children with ADHD, the study showed statistically significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and improvements in ADHD symptoms and executive function. The authors were obviously not naïve about experimental design, as the blog portrays them, because they said in the title that this was “An exploratory study”. 

This passage in Orme-Johnson’s comment leaves me chuckling to myself. The idea that calling their work “an exploratory study” excuses blatant problems and errors in their methods is, in my view, ridiculous. If the experimenters really wanted to draw serious attention to their work, which makes a rather novel if not controversial claim, why wouldn’t they take particular care to ensure that what they were doing wasn’t obviously problematic? Relying on self-reporting and self-controls, ensuring that the schools’ most prominent authority figure was an enthusiastic TM meditator, and coaching the student subjects to expect positive results - and recording that coaching on video! - are not excusable because the study was “exploratory.” If anything, these faults show that the claimed results were most likely the result of the kind of wishful thinking and confirmation bias common among TM meditators, and aren’t really worth considering for further study. But a paper like this, published in a third- or fourth-rate journal, provides the kind of story that’s commonly circulated among TM insiders, that reinforces, for them, that what they’re doing, spending time and money on, is a valid and worthwhile cause. It also provides fodder for press releases that are sent to reporters who aren’t in a position to approach these matters with the skepticism, resources or time to do anything other than to publish these claims verbatim without the most basic examination of how these conclusions were reached.

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 4: When "peer review" becomes "meditator review"

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 3).

Cover of the final volume of the
Journal of Social Behavior and Personality.
Does this look like a legitimate, independent scientific journal to you?

As I’ve discussed in earlier parts of this series, the organizations that offer Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), have long claimed scientific legitimacy and validity for all the claims they regularly make for TM on the basis of scientific research. They imply that the fact that this research has “appeared in many leading, peer-reviewed journals” is as good as a formal stamp of approval, for the accuracy and legitimacy of everything they say in support of TM.

But what do they really mean when they use the phrase, “peer-review?” Earlier, I quoted David Orme-Johnson, the retired psychology department chairman at the TM movement’s university, Maharishi University of Management (MUM), who is currently a promoter of TM by way of his “Truth About TM” website:

Moreover, one purpose of the peer-reviewed process is to screen out studies that may have been biased by the orientation of the investigators. The numerous published studies on the Transcendental Meditation program have met the high standards of peer-review.

In the course of sorting through many of the research papers often cited on lists of TM research that appear on the tm.org website and elsewhere, I came upon an important detail, in a paper written by David Orme-Johnson and two other Maharishi University of Management staffers. This is in the context of a critique of two National Research Council (NRC) reviews of the research on meditation published in 1991 and 1994. Their critique is largely centered on their opinion that the NRC’s reviews did not include certain studies that would have supported their position that TM produces beneficial physical and mental effects that do not occur with other forms of meditation, and that TM provides greater relaxation, greater improvements in human performance, and other benefits compared to other methods, that went unreported in the NRC review.

Near the end of their critique is this statement, which I think is a rather extraordinary demonstration of a basic ignorance or outright avoidance of the scientific method, that I also think contradicts his earlier comments on the bias of investigators, with emphasis added by me:

How can we insure objectivity in future reviews of technologies from non-Western cultures or from radically new scientific paradigms that may be outside the knowledge and experience of the reviewers? We suggest that half of the membership of review committees for new or controversial research be comprised of researchers from different universities or research institutions who are practitioners of the technology in question, who have published research in the field, and who are well conversant with the theoretical frame that informs the research.

So there you have it in their own words. They are suggesting that half of the people who review research on Transcendental Meditation should be meditators themselves; that is what they mean by “practitioners of the technology,” because another name for Transcendental Meditation is the “Maharishi Technology of the Unified Field.” I suppose the phrase means very little if, as is true of most people, including scientists, you aren’t familiar with the background on Transcendental Meditation to recognize that reference. The “Unified Field” pseudonym for TM was frequently used during the early 1990’s in various TM related publications, and it’s defined that way on page 26 of the first, 1987 edition of Bob Roth’s book on TM. (It doesn’t appear in later editions of that book, but it’s mentioned in numerous other publications around that time.)

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 3: Journals are the product of editors and reviewers

Read this series from the beginning.

Read the previous installment of this series (Part 2).

Recent issue of International 
Journal of Neuroscience, 
November 2019

Many people are easily impressed by what look like big numbers, and the organizations that offer Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), often use numbers in a bid to establish scientific legitimacy among non-scientists and the general public. Here’s a particular paragraph that is part of the preface to one bibliography of research on TM, produced by a TM affiliated doctor in the UK:

Scientific research on the Transcendental Meditation technique comprises more than 600 studies conducted at over 250 independent universities and research institutions in 33 countries...  These studies have demonstrated a wide range of benefits for mind, body, behavior, and society... and have appeared in many leading, peer-reviewed journals.

As I explained earlier, this frequently mentioned number of “600 studies” gets significantly reduced in practice, and that’s because, in my opinion, it includes a few hundred studies performed at TM institutions, including Maharishi University of Management, that were never published anywhere other than their own, seven-and-soon-to-be-eight volume, “Collected Papers” series. It’s also interesting to note, that at the inauguration of the so-called “Age of Enlightenment” in 1975, forty-four years ago, it was already claimed that 300 studies were performed at 200 universities.

Today, the list of studies on the tm.org website only includes studies that were published in books, journals or other scientific publications. When that list is pared down to include only original research and not other articles, only 123 studies remain, and they say they were “published in peer-reviewed medical and scientific journals.” Only 21 of those studies were authored entirely by people with no connection to TM movement institutions.

When the list of publications in which those 123 studies appear is analyzed, a pattern emerges: ten of those studies appeared in a single journal, eight of them over a ten year period. Another seven of those studies appeared in a single issue of another journal. Four journals each published four of these articles, and one of those journals published four articles in a single issue.

Given that there are so many journals in which researchers could publish their findings, the question arises: why is it that there are these clusters of TM research papers in a few journals? 

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 2: "peer review" doesn't always mean "quality" or "accuracy"

David Lynch, Sarina Grosswald,
and John Hagelin at a David Lynch
Foundation press conference,
December 2011.

Read this series from the beginning.

This series continues with Part 3, here.

The organizations that have promoted Transcendental Meditation (TM), including the David Lynch Foundation (DLF), have for decades repeated the insistence of TM’s founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that extensive scientific research supports their claims of TM’s validity. As I discussed previously, when their claim that “hundreds of published studies” is examined, it’s clear that an enormous proportion of those studies - 82% of the studies listed from the front page of the tm.org website - have been authored, or co-authored, by researchers with a documentable, institutional tie to a TM organization. That’s just the first of the issues that arise, when their various claims of independence, volume and quality are contrasted with an analysis of this set of studies. I think we can safely assume that a list on the primary TM website would contain the best studies they can come up with and that support their frequent claims of scientific validation of TM. The response of, “is that really all you’ve got to offer after fifty years of trying?” comes to mind when the contents of that list are carefully examined.  The methodology of many of these studies, versus the conclusions made, are the points at which the movement’s assertions don’t hold up under scrutiny.

There’s also the implied insistence among those offering TM, that when a study is published in a “peer-reviewed journal,” that that study has some magical stamp of approval and that everything in any such study, particularly conclusions favoring TM, are always absolutely and perpetually true. This is, unfortunately, often the way that scientific research is reported in the media, leaving a misimpression with the public that published studies in prestigious journals are some fixed statement of scientific reality. This is seldom true. Science is an ongoing process of discovery, and often the findings of studies, even those published in highly regarded, peer-reviewed journals, will conflict with one another, are found to be not all they were initially thought to be, and in a few rare cases, the researchers were found to have committed fraud in the course of producing a study which supported their predetermined conclusion.

This reliance on peer review as some absolute stamp of accuracy and legitimacy is actively exploited by TM apologists. David Orme-Johnson, longtime psychology department chairman at the TM movement’s university, Maharishi University of Management (MUM), writes about peer review on his “Truth About TM” website as if it would, in every case, notice and intercept every instance of shoddy science performed by a researcher, who’s also a meditator, working on a subsequently published study favoring TM:

Moreover, one purpose of the peer-reviewed process is to screen out studies that may have been biased by the orientation of the investigators. The numerous published studies on the Transcendental Meditation program have met the high standards of peer-review.

This is not quite how academic publishing works in the real world, where faults in research, missed by reviewers, are noted by other scientists after they’re appeared in those peer-reviewed journals, and those faults are later discussed. Those critiques, rebuttals and counter-rebuttals of TM research can sometimes be found in the pages of the same journals in which the original studies of TM have been published.

The dubious research claims of Transcendental Meditation, part 1: Truly independent research on TM is rare

TM original research listed on the tm.org website, evaluated over
five-year periods. Meditating individuals and affiliated MIU/MUM
faculty have authored the majority of it since 1981.

For over a half century now, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the movement and the organizations that he spawned, and now the David Lynch Foundation, have insisted that their claims supporting Transcendental Meditation have been scientifically validated, and are supported by some consensus among many scientists. The prominence of TM, and the reputations of public figures who are constantly named in the media as having learned this mental technique, have rested on the assumption that these claims are completely valid. They regularly make reference to a large pile of scientific studies - the actual number of those studies varies a great deal from moment to moment, but it’s usually in the hundreds - that confirm, for them, that these assertions are always true.

But what happens when all those supportive scientific studies that they constantly mention in support of TM, are actually obtained, analyzed, sorted and evaluated? How many of them reflect the work of people who have no connection to TM at all, financial, emotional or otherwise - not as meditators, TM teachers, or faculty at the movement’s own university? Is it at all accurate for them to imply that because they can name-drop many universities, research institutions, and the titles of prominent medical and scientific journals, that some positive scientific consensus exists to support the claims they constantly make for the safety, efficacy and validity of Transcendental Meditation?

The short answer is, as you might expect, no.  This series on TM's research claims continues with Part 2, here.

PDF files containing copies of spreadsheets with all the supporting data for this article are available at the bottom of this page.

Conversation with an Exit Counselor, 1987

I've been cleaning out my files, and I came upon notes from my conversation with an exit counselor back in 1987.  I hope you will enjoy reading some of his comments:

"Of all the groups I have dealt with, some of the most severe casualties have been in TM.  This is in direct contradiction to TM publicity.  Meditation techniques are not appropriate for everyone, because some people have difficulty distinguishing between the inner content and outer content of their minds.  Such people can go into a psychotic state from doing meditation, because these techniques loosen boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious.  For the average person, this is a pleasure, because most people have too many boundaries there.  But for a minority of people, it is dangerous to have the boundary more porous." 

[Editor's comment:  When I saw the film "David Wants to Fly," I had the good fortune to find Dr. Herbert Benson, author of "The Relaxation Response" sitting right behind me!  I introduced myself to him, and he told me a few stories.  Included was, "I observed the course in Fuiggi, Italy.  Since I am an M.D., when I and course participants got off the plane in the U.S., I did sign a bunch of them straight into mental hospitals."] 

"So it was normal for people in TM to "freak out" -- to have highs, lows, get emotional." 

[Editor's comment:  In the TM world, careening highs and lows were considered normal, even positive.  It was called unstressing, and we were told that it meant the person was throwing off old stress.]

I suggested to the exit counselor that TM had a special hook for the average Westerner because it backs up its beliefs with appeals to science.  He replied, "Scientology also bombards people with statistics."  


"If you have a busy, multidimensional life, to sit down for 20 minutes is okay.  But if meditation becomes a goal in itself, it's bad.  It's like fasting.  The first time you do it, it feels good, healing.  But if you continue to fast, it turns on itself.  The mind is similar - it needs information and stimulation.  Without outside stimulation, it stimulates itself.  Thus, inner material comes out.  The person becomes increasingly swallowed up in their inner world, and outside decisions and the outer world become more difficult."

"I feel TM has a callous view of people.  I've treated one of Maharishi's lovers.  She was seduced and abandoned by Mahesh.  She became psychotic.  He promised he would marry her; then she was told, "You're being sent to Switzerland." 

[Editor's comment:  This strikes me as Mahesh being callous, not the TM organization.  But I believe he set the tone, and did make policy for the TMO that was callous.]

"Dr. Herbert Benson's book 'The Relaxation Response' demonstrates that one can create TM-like results without TM.  By any autohypnosis technique, one can do this.  TM's marketing insisted that TM was distinct."

"True scientific research shows that anyone can have a TM-like response.  Almost all psychologists discredit TM research as self-serving and flawed.  For instance, the research on reduced crime is totally without controls, confounding factors, etc.  That research is extremely specious.  All TM research is designed to hook people in.  The TMO allows scientific proofs but not scientific critiques.  When you were in TM, you were only exposed to the research that they wanted you to see."

[Editor's comment:  Is TM research still in disrepute?  I think much less so.  It's being taught in some public schools and veterans' organizations.  And I believe the Surgeon General recently had an amiable discussion with a leading TM proponent.]  

Hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane.  

Online Forum for Cultic Studies Researchers/Students

Any researchers or students of cultic studies in the TM-Free Blog readership?  If so, you may be interested in this.  I received an email from the International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) on July 22, 2015, stating in part:

During recent annual conferences, ICSA has held a special pre-conference workshop for researchers and students interested in conducting scientific research in cultic studies.  At the 2015 workshop in Sweden, researchers decided to set up an online forum through which they could share notes, plan, and give or receive advice or assistance.  This forum will be open only to academic and clinical researchers and students involved in planning and/or conducting cultic studies research.

 The forum is especially interested in helping students and young researchers.

If you are a researcher/student, please complete a short online survey, which should only take a few minutes of your time.  Even if you are not interested in participating in the forum, please complete the survey.  The information you provide will help the ICSA Research Committee plan for the future.

Go here:  https://docs.google.com/a/icsahome.com/forms/d/1spivZSZQTZtIkPceS3vy1VCdLACEnGTOIFTyIOfoOJ0/viewform

I hope some of our readers will find this forum helpful!

Transcendental Meditation: What got you in? And what got you out? Part 1

I've been thinking back over my long strange journey through TM. How did I get so deeply embroiled? How did I get out? Maybe you've been musing over your own life too, or that of those you love who are still embroiled in TM. Here's my chronology. I hope reading it will help some TM-Free readers sort out their own experience.

- I was looking for a better life.
- I read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda. At the tender age of 16, I did not realize that autobiographies were not automatically truthful. The book excited me with the hope that Hinduism's yoga had something special to offer. I tried out Yogananda's teachings, but they did not satisfy me.
- I attended lectures of Swami Satchitananda, who fulfilled my expectations of what a yogi saint should be like. But I did not start his yoga because it seemed like a commitment to a lifestyle change and a difficult practice.
- I had friends who started TM and told me in awed tones what wonderful results it brought, and that it was very easy.
- I attended TM introductory lectures and was impressed by the scientific research, logic of the theory, and serenity of the initiators.
- I was impressed by my initiator's holy glow during the initiation ceremony. When I said my mantra, I felt it reverberate in my mouth and around the room in a mystical way. When I thought the mantra silently for the first time, I was transported to a magical place of inner peace and bliss. I felt euphoric, stoned, for the first three days that I did TM, and I noticed positive changes in myself in those first three days, too. All these things led me to believe that TM was a profound, life-changing spiritual technique.
- The initiators promised that by doing TM twice daily, the positive changes would continue to accumulate. Indeed, for the first few months that I did TM, I did notice small improvements in myself.
- I ran into some TMers who were gung-ho on TM as a method not only for self-improvement, but as the solution for all of life's problems. They encouraged me to attend a long TM course.
- I attended the course and rounded for one month. Maharishi was there in person and lectured several times a day. Also, a few prominent Western guest speakers - scientists, psychologists, astronauts, philosophers, educators, etc. - hailed the virtues of TM. Maharishi promised that TM would solve all problems of society. My brain was in a vulnerable, receptive state from all that sensory deprivation during rounding and from hearing only TM-positive opinions for one month. There was no questioning or challenging. As computer geeks say, "Garbage in, garbage out." It was so easy to be lulled into a dreamy, hopeful state of belief. I experienced Maharishi as giving off saintly emanations. He was charismatic, knowledgeable , charming, flattering, and convincing - and begged us to become TM initiators. It was so easy to fall, as the path of least resistance, into his belief system.
- I left the course a true believer, determined to become an initiator. It never occurred to me to research the opinions of TM skeptics.
- Originally, I believed what Maharishi taught because science and logic supported his system (or so I had been led to believe.) But gradually, unconsciously, I made the transition from "Maharishi says it because it's true" to "If Maharishi says it, then it's true." All my TM activities that followed hereafter just strengthened the belief system that I had now internalized. Residence courses, checker training, advanced lectures, TM teacher training, initiating, working at TM residential centers, learning the TM-Sidhi program, attending long rounding courses for world peace - no matter what Maharishi's latest invention or discovery or program was, Maharishi had to be right, and to question would be disloyal and foolishness.

How about you? Does any of this resonate for you? What got you in?

Coming next: Part 2: And what got you out?

A New Generation Looks at Transcendental Meditation Research

I received this article from a non-meditating college student. I think his points are well-taken.

J.

---

The Effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program On Mindfulness (Tanner, Travis, Gaylord-King, Haaga, Grosswald, & Schneider, 2009) Journal Article Critique - Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).

Tanner, M., Travis, F., Gaylord-King, C., Haaga, D., Grosswald, S., & Schneider, R. (2009). The Effects of the transcendental meditation program on mindfulness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(6), 574-589. doi:10.1002/jclp.20544.

Source: EBSCO database, Academic Search Premiere, Retrieved July 1, 2005Summary: A study of the effects of TM on mindfulness using a self report KIMS (Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness).

Abstract:

The Effects of the Transcendental Meditation Program On Mindfulness (Tanner, Travis, Gaylord-King, Haaga, Grosswald, & Schneider, 2009) abstract reveals the basic information and part of the information to be covered in this article. However, it is somewhat misleading and its findings which are not supported by the data contained later in the article.

Introduction:

The introduction is not clear, concise or relevant to the development of the topic relating to the study of mindfulness and the effect TM has upon it. Some of the articles supporting the basis of the study are quite old and may not be relevant to the study. The written works of the Maharishi in relationship to TM and this study although relevant, are not empirically tested or scrutinized for their scientific validity and bring into question the nature of TM. Those of Kabbat-Zinn and some others are Seminole in relationship to mindfulness; however, there is little current research on the efficacy of TM as a meditation practice. The descriptions of the meditation consciousness in TM are wordy and obfuscate. Additionally, there is no concise description of TM as a meditation practice and how it can be achieved. The subject of the study was finally addressed in the final paragraph of the study which examines if there is a relationship between TM instructions and does it increase mindfulness. Additionally it examines if there is a correlation between mindfulness skills and observing ones inner dialogue or if it is a preexisting characteristic of the individual.

Methods:

There were 295 participants involved with the study and all completed a pre and post study KIM's exam. All of the participants were graduate students from the Washing DC area. Some individuals were excluded from the study for health reasons. Prospective student were given a $50 credit towards their TM instruction and brief introduction to the TM process. They were also given $25 following the test for their cooperation in the assessment. The whole procedure was done at American University in conjunction with the Maharishi University of Management Research Institute (MU) The TM intervention or procedures are taught in a series of 7 steps, as outlined by this study. The details of those steps and the "instruction" of TM are not included in this study. The instructors who taught TM to the student of this study were initially taught by by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself in the 1970's and were "recertified" by MU the 2005. Students were instructed to use the TM method two times a day 20 minutes each day. Adherence to the TM practice was done via self reporting. Those who practiced at least once a day were considered adherents and were included with the results of the study.

The methods used in this study cannot be replicated under normal circumstances thus making this study highly questionable. The fact that it was taught by TM teachers from the MU suggests bias and perhaps control over information.

Results:

Of the 295 pretest participants, only 8 did not complete the KIM's exam and were excluded from the results. Of the remaining 287 individuals, only 210 completed the posttest and from this 15 were excluded because of incomplete KIM's, leaving 195 participants. The number of initial Pretest TM was 145 and the completer sample is 86, only 61% of the original group. The number of initial pretest WL is 145 and the completer sample is 109 or 75% of the original. The KIM's score did show a statistical difference when compared to the waitlist group. However, under all the other conditions, there was little or no statistical significance. The items being measured outside of the KIM's score are not defined or explained in any great detail whatsoever.

Although an ANOVA was done, the results were not reported clearly. There is no ANOVA table, only a comparative means table. The alpha level was not disclosed in this study. There is a notation regarding an alpha level on one chart which contains the r scores but it is only in relationship to the comparison of the present study to the Baer et al (2004) study. The ANOVA data is incomplete and missing many pieces of relevant data. Several pieces of relevant statistical information were contained in a single paragraph that should have been expanded to two or more. No statistical software is mentioned as being used in this study and it appears that the analysis of the data might have been done manually. APA formatting for this article is weak and the relevant data in the tables is misleading and poorly formatted. Other tables included in the text are difficult to read, and poorly designed and when examined carefully may indicate that data was not analyzed properly.

Discussion:

The discussion once again makes the implication that there is a significant increase in mindfulness as a result of practicing TM. However, the facts revealed in the data do not support this hypothesis, except for the KIM's score on a minor level. The statistical findings are not reiterated to back up this supposition. The summary does make some acknowledgement of the limitation of the study which is actually quite significant. Noting that the attrition rate is nearly 29% from the initial group brings to questions the post tests results statistical accuracy. Another factor acknowledged which seriously brings up questions about the efficacy of the study is the fact that only 66% of the participants meditated regularly as prescribed by TM. It is also noted that there are no detailed written logs of meditation times, only a verbal report by the subject. Also it is noted that there the study is limited in that it does not examine or compare TM mindfulness to other forms of meditation which are designed to specifically increase mindfulness (Vipassana).

Although there are some minute findings in this study which may be useful for examination in further research. This study cannot be replicated by any normal means or in a clinical laboratory. The fact that the Maharishi University of Management Research Institute was involved with this study suggests a strong bias and lack of neutrality or objectivity. The statistician who analyzed the data was from this university. Additionally, the results of this study were done by self report and not clinical laboratory standards which can be monitored.

I have read other journal articles on mediation, mindfulness and even Metta meditation (loving kindness) which went into great lengths to examine their findings. They were clear concise and professionally written. This article is none of the aforementioned. Although hoping to find a well written and concise article on TM, I instead found something that is unclear, imprecise and obfuscate.

References:

American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: APA.

Ruth A., B., Gregory T., S., & Kristin B., A. (2004). Assessment of Mindfulness by Self-Report: The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills. Assessment, 11(3), 191-206. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

Tanner, M., Travis, F., Gaylord-King, C., Haaga, D., Grosswald, S., & Schneider, R. (2009). The Effects of the transcendental meditation program on mindfulness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(6), 574-589. doi:10.1002/jclp.20544.

Excellent Article Questions Significance of Transcendental Meditation Research

A fine, critical blog, "The Honest Truth about TM," recently posted a discussion of an article by Travis, et al., on "alpha power" measured for newly instructed TM meditators and a control group of non-meditators.

You may be able to read the Travis article published in Cognitive Processing for yourself, if you have access to an online article-search database (available through most universities and some libraries). It's also possible that Dr. Travis will send you a copy, as he has been extremely generous about sharing his research with interested parties.

The Wikipedia page on "TM-Sidhi Program" contains similar criticisms of coherence studies, noting, "Scientists now consider EEG 'coherence' to be an obsolete measurement since it does not separate the effects of amplitude and phase in the interrelations between two EEG signals. [source: Jean-Philippe Lachaux, Eugenio Rodriguez, Jacques Martinerie, and Francisco J. Varela; ; Measuring phase synchrony in brain signals; Human Brain Mapping, 1999]."

Some relevant quotes from the blog post:

A recent study published in the low-impact journal "Cognitive Processing" by TM Org employees Fred Travis, David A. F. Haaga , John Hagelin, Melissa Tanner, Alaric Arenander, Sanford Nidich, Carolyn Gaylord-King, Sarina Grosswald, Maxwell Rainforth and Robert H. Schneider claims to (once again) establish significance for that which is well known to be insignificant....

Alpha EEG waves (or more commonly simply "alpha") is a common artifact of everyday human life. Coherent alpha is needed for everyday function of our brains and in no way represents anything extraordinary.... No one else seems to buy it except these guys, as they still keep talking about it long after their scientific peers have called such speculations "exaggerated" or "premature" [2007, The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness]....

As the great pioneer in EEG interpretation, Barbara Brown, states "Concluding anything about alpha is perilous"....

Classic TM researcher manipulation of baseline. An old TM Org trick. Didn't fool me. The real question is how many people will they fool?

J.

More Doubtful Transcendental Meditation "Research" Clogging the Intertubes

Transcendental Meditation Marketer$ are ballyhooing the latest "research" on the neurological effects of TM: "A self-referential default brain state: patterns of coherence, power, and eLORETA sources during eyes-closed rest and Transcendental Meditation practice."

Try this Google search, and you will find hundreds of sites uncritically reporting a press release put out by the Maharishi University of Management on the "study."

It appears the research was funded by MUM itself.

But check out the authors: Fred Travis, David A. F. Haaga, John Hagelin, Melissa Tanner, Alaric Arenander, Sanford Nidich, Carolyn Gaylord-King, Sarina Grosswald, Maxwell Rainforth, and Robert H. Schneider.

• Lead author Travis (pictured above) is a MUM professor and head of Vedic Science.
  
• Haaga (American University) may be legit, although he's been prominently displayed in other TM studies recently.
• Schneider is a MUM professor of physiology and health.
  
• Melissa Tanner is Haaga's graduate student.
  
• Alaric Arenander goes way back in the movement to Charlie Lutes days and sure looks like a quack.
  
• Sanford Nidich is a MUM professor of physiology and health and education.
  
• Carolyn Gaylord-King is on the board of trustees of MUM and a professor of health and education to boot.
  
• Sarina Grosswald is Executive Director Office of ADHD and Learning Differences at David Lynch Foundation and Director at Arlington - DC Transcendental Meditation Center, the closest TM center to Haaga.
  
• Maxwell Rainforth is an assistant professor of physiology and health and statistics at MUM.
  
• Of course, Hagelin needs no introduction—although what this erstwhile quantum physicist knows about biomedical research is beyond me.

The full study itself is for sale, but costs $34. I'm not sure it's worth the cost to actually purchase.

J.

Critiquing Transcendental Meditation's "scientific research"

Question: How valid is TM's scientific research?
Answer: Not very.

A Brief Overview of TM Research:
According to the Transcendental Meditation organization (TMO), "...More than 600 scientific studies have been conducted at more than 250 universities and research institutes in 33 countries. These studies have been published in over 100 leading scientific journals worldwide, and they objectively document the profound physiological, psychological, and sociological benefits of Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Programme in every area of life...." (1)

What the TM organization does not publicize, however, is:
(1) that a high percentage of these studies are suspect. The research is specifically designed so that TM will come out looking good. (See http://trancenet.net/research/index.shtml

In addition, the quote above from the TMO website does not mention that:

(2) a lot of the research is done by TMers or funded by TMers, and is therefore inherently biased; and
(3) when non-TM scientists do research, they compare various types of meditations, and the results have been that each meditation has its own strengths and weaknesses. TM does not stand out as best. These studies are ignored by the TMO. For information, google "Google -- Scholar" and type in something like "comparision meditation techniques research results." Also, see http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/expressnews_template/article.cfm?id=8572and
(4) Research has shown that TM can sometimes be harmful. These studies are never quoted by the TMO. (See http://minet.org/research.html.)

So where do we come in?
While most TMFree readers are not professional researchers, I think we can contribute something useful to the research, specifically to the bias problem mentioned in item (1) above. Critics of the research papers have done a good job in critiquing what has been published. But what if something questionable was done that was not reported in the final paper?

So that's where we come in.

Many of us have "insider" experiences with the TMO. During our time in the TMO, we may have accidentally stumbled upon a small piece of the research that was unscientific. So I invite readers to search their memories. Do you recall incidents which at the time seemed simply quirky or isolated, but in retrospect, were examples of a violation of the scientific method? You may have to think outside the box or reframe the incident to see how it is related to the scientific method. You may have to consider not what was done, but what was not done; not what you saw, but what you didn't see....

Our stories will only be anecdotes, and anecdotal evidence is not scientific proof. However, these anecdotes provide glimpses which may inspire researchers to dig deeper into questionable practices.

So, to get the ball rolling, I will share my own memories that relate to the biased quality of TM research. In addition, I will relate a few anecdotes from old TMFree posts and comments. Unfortunately I have neither the time nor the inclination to dig up all the original posts and comments, so I apologize in advance for any errors in my memory or interpretation.

So here goes. To reiterate, the question for the day is:

Did you ever personally see evidence of violation of the scientific method in TM studies?

1. The year was 1980, I think. I lived on the MIU campus in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. I did the TM and TM-Sidhis program in the meditation hall from 2 to 4 times a day with up to 700 other women. One day, after everyone was seated on the mattresses, the leader announced that we were all going to add something to our program. She had something like an electric meter in her hand. She spoke a phrase that went something like: "Turn back the meter." She instructed us to think this phrase in the same manner as we thought the "sutras" in our TM-Sidhis program (the technique in which the phrase we thought was supposed to manifest in the world.) We were to think the above phrase 2 or 4 times (I can't remember which), after we finished TM but before we started the TM-Sidhis. She didn't tell us who had ordered this change, or who had designed it, or why we were doing it. The only additional thing she said was, "Do not say a word about this to anybody!"

We did this practice for about a week, and then we were told to stop doing it. We weren't told why we were now stopping. We were reminded, "Do not mention this to anyone!" And we never heard another word about it.

What was this all about?

Today, I believe we were guinea pigs in an experiment to prove that the TM-Sidhis actually produced effects in the physical world. (An illegal experiment, I might add, since we had not volunteered, and we had not been warned about possible harmful effects.) If 700 sidhas had actually succeeded in causing the meter's hand to move even a millimeter, I think they would have published that. I think we failed to produce the result they wanted, so the experiment was scrapped, we were warned against spilling the secret, and the failure was never reported.

2. A few years ago, one of our TMFree regulars (possibly Sudarsha) wrote that he once saw Maharishi sit with someone and review a line graph illustrating the results of a study showing the benefits of TM. Maharishi asked, "Couldn't you draw the line 'this' way instead of 'that' way, in order to make the results look better?" The other person agreed to make the change.

3. About a year ago, one of our readers shared that she had chatted with a researcher at MIU who was studying the "Maharishi Effect." (The ME states that when a certain percentage of the population practices TM, quality of life improves, as shown by crime statistics, pollution, unemployment rate, etc.) The research compared cities that had comparable demographics but a different percentage of TMers. The researcher told her, "In some cases, the city with the higher percentage of TMers did not show an improved quality of life. So we deleted those groups of cities from our final study."

4. A few months ago, contributor Gina wrote that when TM researchers in Fairfield were studying TMers to prove TM's benefits, they first eliminated "heavy unstressers" from their sample.

5. An old TMFree post is a reprint of a public letter from Earl Kaplan, a TMer who together with his brother David had donated over $100 million dollars (U.S.) to the TMO. He writes that "Mahesh for years had been raising hundreds of millions of dollars for his world peace groups...." (World peace groups were the gatherings of thousands of pundits to one location to chant together, thus assuring world peace forever.) According to Earl's letter, Earl said to Maharishi, "Maharishi, since you have the money and supposedly you have enough pundits, why don't you create a 10,000 group in India and the world will experience peace?..." (Several years previously, his brother David had obtained U.S. governmental approval to bring one or two thousand pundits to the USA. before this could happen, he got word that Maharishi had changed his mind and felt it was not a good time to send them.) Mahesh looked at Earl like he was crazy and said, "Earl, if we created the group then we don't know if it would create world peace or not. We would have to have the group and then see what the effect it has." Earl and David have since left the TMO.

Aside from the contempt and deceit Maharishi exhibited, I believe Maharishi was also saying that he did not want an experiment to be performed if the results would not make TM look good, i.e. if the results disproved the "Maharishi Effect."

OK, those are my offerings. Anyone else have memories about TMO's corruption of the scientific method in TM studies?

Footnotes:
(1) www.globalgoodnews.com/research.html

Transcendental Meditation's Attitude on Mental Health

This essay is yet another of my trips down memory lane - this time, my memories of the TM organization's (i.e. Maharishi's) attitudes about mental health.

Back in 1970, before I ever learned TM, I had meditating friends who liked to tell me anecdotes about how rapidly TM improved mental health: "One man walked into the TM initiation room looking stressed and miserable; he walked out one hour later looking radiant," or, "This woman showed up at her therapist's office one week after learning TM, and the therapist said, 'My goodness! You seem so much better! What's happened to you?!' " I was 19 years old at the time, and I was very impressed. Now, with 40 years more experience under my belt, I would be less impressed. I would ask, "Did those benefits continue? Were there any harmful side effects?"

Back in 1970, the TM introductory lecture consisted of four speakers, each one speaking on a different topic: TM for mental potential, TM for health, TM for social behavior and TM for world peace. TM was presented as the solution to psychological problems.

After I was initiated, there were three days of follow up. We filled out forms that asked if we saw benefits in our lives yet. Almost all the people in my class had. The implication - which no one questioned - was that these changes were permanent, these benefits were from TM, and more benefits would be forthcoming soon.
The implication was that TM was both faster and more effective than psychotherapy.

My initiator had a condescending attitude towards psychotherapy. I think the rule back then was that if you were seeing a counselor more than once a week, you couldn't learn TM. My initiator said, "Either decide that the therapy's done what you wanted it to do, so you don't need it anymore and stop; or decide that the therapy isn't working, and stop. Either way, you can learn TM after you stop therapy."

Psychotherapy seemed to be a step down from TM. TM research was coming out showing that practicing TM produced mental health, and it produced it faster, less expensively and more holistically than psychotherapy.

This condescending attitude towards psychotherapy was explicit at the 1972 Humboldt College, Arcata, California, USA one-month course which I attended. Someone asked Maharishi about the value of psychotherapy. He replied that in the old days, people would go to their grandparents for advice, but nowadays, since families didn't live near each other, if you had problems you paid someone to listen to you. "Psychotherapy," he explained, "just stirs up the mud." It just made people worse. "Carl Jung's brother said that Carl was such an unhappy, miserable person. So how good could psychotherapy be?" Maharishi posited. (Someone in the audience pointed out, "Maharishi, Carl Jung was an only child." "Oh," Maharishi replied.)

If you were seeing a psychotherapist, you wouldn't be accepted for a TM teacher training course, or for an advanced teacher's course, (ATR), or for the TM-Sidhis course.

I had an initiator friend who was seriously depressed. I advised her to get professional help. She refused, saying, "But then I won't be accepted for an advanced course!"

What was the reason for this policy? Was it to keep meditators away from psychotherapists? Was it to keep meditators coming back to TM courses? Was it to keep meditators ignorant of the benefits of other methods? Was it to prevent unstable people from flipping out during rounding? Was it to keep knowledge of TM out of the hands of psychotherapists? I don't know, but it kept many meditators away from the help they dearly needed.

It also turned some meditators into liars. "Have you seen a psychotherapist?" asked the TM-Sidhis application form. "Well, I did see someone for career counseling," responded a friend of mine who received psychotherapy from a career counselor/psychotherapist. "Was he a therapist?" asked her TM interviewer. "Well, he did have a master's degree in English," she replied honestly. (And a doctorate in counseling, she omitted.) She was accepted for the course. "Filling out TM applications is an...'art form'," an initiator friend of mine wryly advised me.

Meanwhile, more scientific research continued to come out of the TM movement, showing that TM improved all areas of a person's life, including their mental health. These "independent scientific studies" have been criticized for inaccuracy and bias. For a critical analysis of TM research, click here:

http://trancenet.net/reserach/index.shtml
http://spacecityskeptics.wordpress.com/2009/01/07/how-to-design-a-positive-study-meditation-for-childhood-adhd/#comment-170

By 1975, Maharishi's "World Plan" was in full swing, promising that once a certain percentage of people around the world practiced TM, seven goals would be achieved, two of which were "to develop the full potential of the individual" and "to solve the problems of crime, drug-abuse and all behavior that brings unhappiness to the family of man." In other words, TM led inexorably to mental health.

Meanwhile, some people were attending TM Teacher Training courses and meditating for over 6 hours a day. Rumors were coming out that all that meditating was harmful for some people. Despite Maharishi's assurance that all manner of discomfort was "unstressing" and that "something good was happening," there were rumors of suicides, of people who became mute, of mental hospitalizations....

I was also starting to hear stories of people who after learning TM became more and more withdrawn and unsociable, and just sat in their houses all day and did TM.

In 1975 I visited my sister who was working at the Academy for the Science of Creative Intelligence in Livingston Manor, New York, USA. To thank the facility for letting me stay a few days, I offered to put their free lending library in order. The director at Livingston Manor instructed me to remove all books about psychology and self-help (and about other spiritual paths, too).

In 1977, I applied for the TM-Sidhis course. At that time, I had just been laid off from my job, my boyfriend had just broken up with me and had kept the apartment, leaving me homeless, and an accident had left me on crutches. I told my TM interviewer that I was a stressed out due to these pressures, and she replied that "TM should have strengthened you enough so that you would handle these challenges with calm and equanimity; therefore I have to conclude that you aren't emotionally stable enough for the course." (In retrospect, I wonder if she meant that this demonstrated that TM didn't work, or that I was somehow deficient.) The official cure for "emotional instability" and/or "unstressing" was to get your meditation checked, do more pranayama (yogic breathing exercises) and do more yoga asanas. That would set things right.

Another initiator friend of mine - I believe he got his Ph.D. in physics from an Ivy League college - gave me this thoughtful analysis of the genesis of mental illness: "People talk themselves into mental illness. I knew this woman who decided she had problems, and she just talked it into herself and talked it into herself, til finally she did become mentally ill."

In 1978 I got some counseling, and I became sufficiently "emotionally stable" that I was accepted for the TM-Sidhis course. In addition to learning the TM-Sidhis, the instructors used to read the English translation of the Ninth Mandala of the Rig Veda (a Hindu holy book) aloud to us for 15 minutes at a time. Jerry Jarvis (the former director of the Students International Meditation Society, U.S.) informed us that "the Ninth Mandala dissolves emotional hang-ups." Maharishi also helpfully explained that most mental illness was caused by not bathing frequently enough.

On the last day of the TM-Sidhis course, Maharishi begged us all to immediately move to Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. He explained that our "flying" together on this recent course had prevented the outbreak of war, but the end of the course would create a sort of vacuum where there was even more chance than ever for war. I - and hundreds of others - moved to Fairfield that month.

I was depressed and anxious in Fairfield, doing my TM-Sidhis program two to four times a day. Was I unstressing? Was I simply too emotionally unstable? I felt that I needed counseling, but unfortunately there was no counseling department on campus. I had heard a rumor that such a department had once existed, but that Maharishi had told them to shut it down, as it just led to increased "negativity". I believe the counselors were transferred to the "academic counseling" office. So I contacted the academic counseling dept. and asked for an appointment. When I told the academic counselor of my emotional state, he encouragingly replied, "The only thing wrong with you is that you need a buddy!" (The buddy system was a TM tradition whereby you went everywhere with your buddy, and let them know if you were "unstressing.") One of the women in my dorm agreed to be my buddy, but since she continued to spend all her time with her friends from home, I never did find out if the only thing wrong with me was the lack of a "buddy." I did cheer up, however, when I moved to a dorm where I knew the people, and got a job I liked.

Several months later, an MIU friend confided to me that she was miserable, near tears, anxious, depressed, "unstressing." She went to a higher up and "confessed" that she had lied on her TM-Sidhis application form, and maybe she wasn't really evolved enough or stable enough to be worthy of living at MIU. The supervisor consoled her with, "No, if you're here, you were meant to be here."

A year and a half later, I started having anxiety attacks when I did the sidhis. These attacks were spilling over into my daily life. I left Fairfield about this time. Back home, I phoned the TM-Sidhis Administrators to ask them how to deal with the anxiety during my program. They never called me back. Eventually I stopped doing the TM-Sidhis.

A few years later, I read that several MIU students had ended up in the county mental hospital. How could that be, since TM improves mental health? An MIU professor explained, "Going to college is very stressful."

Others in Fairfield were also being hit with bouts of anxiety and depression, which was called "roughness" or "unstressing." When they complained about their condition, they were chided, "You're purifying the whole earth of its impurities, and you complain about unstressing!"

Slowly, counseling slipped into the Fairfield TM community. People kept it a secret if they were receiving counseling - after all, they could be thrown off courses, and their friends might look down on them for "stirring up the mud" and for not following Maharishi's wishes. But as one Fairfield TMer apologetically explained, "Of course we don't want to go to counselors. But if there's a n\crisis - you know, like your husband's having an affair, or your kid's on drugs - well, then, you do it if you have to." She never did explain how a husband could be having an affair or a child could be on drugs if they were all practicing that mental health-producing technique, Transcendental Meditation.

Well, those are my memories of the TM attitude towards mental health. Anyone have any memories that they would like to share? (Anonymously is fine.) Or any other comments?

The article I reproduced below is written by a pediatrician who blogs on Space City Skeptics, based in Houston. It is reproduced with the permission of the author and was originally found here.

This study discussed in the article has been extensively promoted by the TMO. I use Google Alerts to keep up on transcendental meditation and in the past couple of weeks every day there are multiple references to this study. Most of the articles appear to reiterate a press release, without looking at the study itself. Given the extensive promotion of the so called study, I can only conclude that the purpose of the study is to advertise TM. The article:

How to Design a Positive Study: Meditation for Childhood ADH

….. Several news sources and blogs have recently reported on a study looking into the benefit of transcendental meditation (TM) in children diagnosed with ADHD. A January 5th report from Reuters Health, a news service which claims to be “internationally recognized as unbiased, authoritative, timely and dependable, with the reputation for quality that one expects from a Reuters company“, actually serves as a perfect example of how not to cover science or health news. With a skeptical mindset, a few minutes of spare time and an internet connection, I was easily able to discover the dubious reality behind this “landmark” research.

The study, led by “cognitive learning specialist” Sarina J. Grosswald, involved the instruction in TM techniques of 10 students previously diagnosed with ADHD and enrolled in a private school for children with learning disabilities. These students were followed over three months, at the end of which they were evaluated for improvement in a number of areas. According to the Reuters’ piece:

“After three months, Grosswald and her colleagues found, the students reported lower stress and anxiety levels, while their ADHD symptoms also improved, based on questionnaires given to teachers and parents.” Impressive. For those who are confused, TM is a form of meditation developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950’s which involves the repetition of a meaningless sound, or mantra, while sitting quietly with eyes shut. This allows the practitioner to quiet the mind and discover the “source of thought”.

The mind and body are then able to achieve a state of calm and, according to proponents, reap myriad medical benefits far beyond that of simply increased peace of mind. Believers in TM have also been known to claim that an extension of the technique can lead to fighting crime with their minds and flying. I’m not kidding.

This is a pilot study published in a online education journal edited by graduate students, something which does no inspire confidence in me. I do not think that a reputable peer-reviewed medical journal would have accepted it. At least the authors do admit in the discussion section that it would be inappropriate to make claims regarding a cause and effect relationship between TM and any improvement in ADHD symptoms based on these results. That doesn’t stop them from making bold statements regarding the benefit of TM, however, as I will soon get to.

The flaws in this study are numerous. The number of subjects is too small, there is no control group and it isn’t blinded. The study reveals that some of the children are on medication but it does not take into account the possibility of recent changes in medical therapy, or improved compliance while on the study. It is based purely on self-report and subjective questionnaires and there is very high likelihood that a placebo effect could have been the sole responsible factor in the subjects’ apparent improvements. The authors then call for larger and better designed studies, something which I don’t think is justified for these reasons, but my problem with this study, and concerns regarding the credulous take by the media, go much deeper than what I’ve already explained.

What led me to dig deeper after reading the Reuters’ report was the following quote:

“The effect was much greater than we expected,” lead researcher Sarina J. Grosswald, a cognitive learning specialist in Arlington, Virginia, said in a written statement.”

I wondered why the researcher had expected an effect and hypothesized that there may be a connection between the researchers and TM more significant than academic curiosity. I was quickly able to discover that Grosswald is a hardcore believer in TM. Just read this quote by Grosswald from a website called Ask The Doctors, which provides a forum for specialists to answer questions related to TM and health:

“The TM technique is the exact opposite of harmful. It reduces your risk of getting serious chronic health problems like hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease. In fact, research on the Transcendental Meditation program shows that people who practice it go to the doctor about 50% less than the general population. And if they are in the hospital for some reason, their hospital stay is 50% shorter, on average. For some conditions, the need for medical care is as much as 87% less for TM meditators. Practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique is one of the best things you can do for your health.”

She clearly does not come across as an unbiased investigator. In reading her other responses on the “Ask The Doctors” website, and especially after listening to a 16-minute talk she gave in 2005, when this research actually took place, which is posted on a Maharishi Vedic Education Development Corporation sponsored website that focuses on “ADHD, the Mind and the Transcendental Meditation technique” called Insights in Health, it is obvious that she is a true believer. That doesn’t prove the research is bogus by itself, but it is a red flag.

A more concerning red flag, and one which was also discovered in the talk given by Grosswald, is the fact that the 10 children involved in the study may have been coached. In the last few minutes of the presentation, Grosswald presents clips of the children meeting with the TM proponents prior to the initiation of the study, where it appears that they are told what the expected outcome of the trial is, that their symptoms will improve with TM.

Not only are these kids aged 11 to 14 being told what the expected outcome of the study is by study investigators, the headmaster of the school, Linda Handy, can be seen at the very end of the video discussing how amazing the technique is and how it will change the students’ futures for the better. I am forced to question whether the teachers, whose evaluations of the study subjects’ behavior and performance are an integral component of the study conclusions of positive effect, might have been hesitant to give a negative evaluation when their boss is clearly also a true believer.

In the acknowledgments section, The authors thank the Abramson Family Foundation for funding and the Institute for Community Enrichment for support. The Abramson Family Foundation is an organization which believes that TM can help students achieve the full potential of their brain.

“The Abramson Family Foundation has been funding research on Transcendental Meditation and providing scholarships for students to learn the technique for the past 20 years. This has been a rewarding investment in the youth of our nation. Here is a common sense approach—a sound and scientific way—of fulfilling the purpose of education, which is to create intelligent, dynamic, happy, healthy and successful human beings.”

Of note, Grosswald sits on the Board of Advisors for the foundation. Joining her on the Board is none other than the school headmaster Linda Handy. Whatever doubt I had in my lack of enthusiasm for this study fell by the wayside upon that discovery. While it may not have been intentional on the part of the study authors, the school headmaster, or the pro-TM funding organizations, this study was designed in a way that coulnd’t possibly yield anything other than a positive result. And calls for further study, especially with public funds in addition to the over twenty million already spent by the NIH on TM, are unwarranted.

It wasn’t difficult to look at this study and see that the claims being made by TM supporters aren’t valid. It wasn’t even that hard to uncover the connections between the investigators, the school where the study was conducted and pro-TM organizations. Yet I was unable to find one news report that displayed even the slightest amount of critical thinking, instead reading like press releases from TM believers. The current state of science and health reporting is rather depressing, and I don’t see things improving any time soon as more and more dedicated science writers are falling prey to the poor economy.